Friday Night Videos
February 8th, 2013 - 10:26 pm
CAUTION: Elvis and New Wave do not mix. Except when Billy Idol does it.
Synthesizers? Check. Elvis delivery? Check. Dry-humping the stage floor? Check.
This one came out the summer after my Junior year of high school, but St. Louis radio stations just weren’t playing it often enough for my tastes. A quick walk to West End Wax and seven dollars later, and I had the album. Cassette, actually. Wore it out before I became a Senior.
I always preferred White Wedding.
Record company cassette tapes. About the worst way to experience whatever music had been mangled in the high-speed duplication process.
That said, jamming a cassette tape into the dashboard-mounted player was an intrinsic part of my youth that I’ll never forget. The 15 YO daughter, if faced with a real TDK SA-X 90 (I was always TDK over Maxell) wouldn’t have the slightest clue to what she was holding.
Oh, and that’s why old BIC disposable pens had that perfect hexagonal shape.
Love the opening to this song.
I still have the album tucked away. Of course I don’t have the technology to play it.
One BIG thing with the Billy-Steve partnership was they ALWAYS seemed to be having FUN(!) with the music. Which is why I think their stuff holds up so well. And others do not.
zeprin
(who was already a Geezer when Billy Idol exploded on the scene)
The release of this video marks the point when I officially got sick of the hairspray days of rock-n-roll.
Good song, but gag. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Hairspray bands lasted seemingly forever.
And yes, White Wedding is my favorite from Idol. But the opening sequence to Top Gun is Stevie’s best. Holy cow, I still get chills when I watch that movie.